Coping automatically

At the University of Western Sydney's School of Engineering, students are introduced to a number of automatic control topics over a period of 13 weeks. The Control Systems unit is generally regarded by the students as a difficult unit, in part due to the scope of the topics and the emphasis on being able to integrate concepts from separate areas. This means developing the ability to think laterally, to take up independent learning, to connect between ideas when they are asked to compare and look for similarities. The students, in the main, struggle with the concepts over the weeks but are rewarded when the pieces come together, hopefully, at the time of final assessment. One of the perceived problems inherent in the unit was ensuring the students captured sufficient study time; this was one of the reasons that Matlab sessions were introduced as a major component of the practical tasks. The content of the Control Systems unit was delivered weekly via lectures of 1.5 hours, tutorials of 1 hour and practicals of 2 hours. As part of the practical sessions, in alternate weeks the students complete exercises using Matlab. In the other weeks, students complete physical practicals that deal with first order systems, oscillations and servomechanisms. The Matlab exercises are designed to demonstrate and reinforce the concepts treated through rapid visual displays, from simple frequency calculations to observer matrices and the response of state variables. The exercises put forward the concepts discussed and allowed exploration via instantly generated graphs. The students then have the chance to respond to the feedback which acts as a stimulus to review understanding. Matlab was adopted to this extent in the Control Systems unit as an experiment, in an attempt to encourage the students to take ownership of the notions presented. How successful the incorporation of Matlab was is still being unfolded.